Collecting end-user opinions on products, services, entities and/or features is an important way to inform a company of end-user satisfaction and improvement needs. Armed with end-user opinions, a company can achieve greater market penetration and develop future improvements.
Traditionally, product manufacturers and/or service providers provide paper surveys and/or contact users directly to request end-user opinions. These surveys often ask why a user purchased a product and/or service and about the user's initial opinions of the product, service, entity and/or features of the product and/or service. However, most end-users never complete the survey request or take the time to respond to the telephone inquiry.
With the development of online sales, much end-user opinion collection has gone online. Some companies provide online electronic surveys requesting end-user opinions. Electronic surveys are more convenient than paper surveys and less invasive than telephone calls. Although more users are willing to complete the electronic surveys, the significant majority of users still do not fill them out.
Websites unrelated to the original manufacturer and/or service provider have been developed that allow users to rate and review products, services, entities and/or features. Examples of such websites include Amazon.com and Edmunds.com. Users can navigate to a page corresponding to a particular product and/or service, and can rate the product, service, entity and/or features of the product and/or service. Other websites that provide end-user opinions of products, services, entities and/or features include blogs, message boards, auction sites, consumer review sites, expert sites, traditional media sites, etc. Accordingly, after a user has had an opportunity to evaluate a product and/or service, the user may be motivated to publish his or her opinions regarding the product, service, entity and/or features.
Accordingly, a company can read the comments of paper and electronic surveys received and read the published opinions corresponding to each of their products and/or services and to each of their competitor's products and/or services. Thus, the company can educate itself as to end-user opinions, how their products and/or services compare to their competitor's products and/or services, what features are liked or disliked, and what features may be desirable for future products, entities and/or services. However, mining for end-user opinions is a time consuming task.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an example company 10. The example company 10 includes several entities at various positions in the corporate hierarchy. The example company 10 may include a CEO 100 who manages entities such as marketing 105, customer service 110, and engineering and product development 115. Marketing 105 may include additional entities such as public relations, communications and sales 120; customer lead generation 125; and customer need generation 130. Each of these entities may find the end-user opinions valuable. Accordingly, a system and method to assist with end-user opinion mining would be helpful.